The Ages of human Development.
3
place or connection with the soil; even a small tribe required a
large tract of land, for a square mile supported only one man,
while in England the population is 265 and in portions of India
over 400 to the square mile. The flocks and herds increased,
and gradually came the idea of personal property. After man
ceased to be a nomad and became a tiller of the soil and began
to sow and reap, then came the idea of property in real estate,
belonging not to the individual but to the tribe.
In all countries similar weapons and instruments were used
in the chase and for warfare and in the construction of habita
tions. Stones, everywhere found, were early shaped into darts
and lances and then into arrow-heads and axes. This was the
Stone age. Copper mines have been found in Egypt and near
Lake Superior, abandoned long before the beginning of history;
copper from these and other mines was the first metal used be
cause found in its native state; then tin, and with the invention
of bronze a further advance toward civilization. This was the
Bronze age. Every new invention or discovery made the next
stage more rapid; yet it was long after the Bronze age before
iron was used.
Even now in the different parts of the world men are passing
through these various stages. In Kamchatka the natives live
in caves of rocks and cover the openings with skins; they have
no domestic animals, not even the dog; their weapons are bones
and pointed stones. In Terra del Fuego the natives live on sea
mussels, fish, rats and wild geese. In central Africa the Dwarfs
possess no domestic animal but poultry, and some of the tribes
live almost entirely on roots, berries and nuts. These people
belong to the Stone age. Other tribes of Africa have passed
from savagery to barbarism, the first stage of progress, and make
vessels of copper and bronze. The equatorial Indians of South
America subsist almost entirely on the fruit of the banana and
the palm tree, and by hunting and fishing. The Mandans of
Dakota lived in mud houses. I have seen similar huts among
the Tatars of Asia. In Russia the agricultural land generally
belongs to the commune, or mir, as the commune is called.
Every year the property is allotted to the families of the mir
according to their size.
In the earliest ages government was unknown; with the
family came the first idea of government, the head of the family
having despotic power over all its members; then several fam-